


lightning before the thunder

by stevenstamkos



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Tampa Bay Lightning, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevenstamkos/pseuds/stevenstamkos
Summary: Steven accepted long ago that there’s something a little weird about Victor. Something about the way it storms whenever he’s in a bad mood, about the way the room feels charged with electricity when he walks in. Something about the way the scent of rain follows him everywhere, the smell of a summer storm. Even the way he’s a little obsessive about Thursdays, which is kind of cute.Victor is a little weird, maybe in ways that aren’t completely human.





	lightning before the thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Stammer and Heddy have an amazing friendship, and one of the main reasons that they both signed long-term contracts with the Lightning in summer 2016 was because they wanted to stay together and win together. More on that [here](https://www.rawcharge.com/2017/3/19/14973988/91-days-of-stamkos-day-77-tampa-bay-lightning-victor-hedman-steven-stamkos-bromance-steve-yzerman).
> 
> Rating: A little bit more sexual than a T but probably not enough to truly warrant an M. Still, just to be safe.
> 
> Title from "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons

Steven has always loved thunderstorms, in a way that he can’t really explain. There’s something raw and powerful about them, and as a kid in Toronto, Steven used to park himself at the window during storms, watching the rain come down through the branches of the nearby oak trees. He liked the flashes of lightning best, followed by the rolling thunder.

Sometimes, he would sneak out to stand in the rain, which would drive his parents and his coaches nuts, but he’d never get sick from it.

“You’re so weird,” PK would tell Steven during those sleepover nights in North York when they were ten, Steven kneeling on a chair at the window and PK in Steven’s bed with a cup of stale hot chocolate.

“Look, Subby. Lightning,” Steven would say back, and PK wouldn’t have time to look before thunder shook the house.

Steven loved those nights, opening the window a crack so he could smell the rain and feel the wind on his nose, which he would stick through the opening, eyes on the raindrops hitting the glass like slappers from the point. There was just something about thunderstorms. Something that called to him.

 

When Steven is eighteen years old, Tampa Bay calls his name in an airy arena in Ottawa, and Steven climbs up on the stage and puts on the hat and jersey with their lightning bolt logo, and things fall into place.

It makes sense, he thinks. It makes sense that Steven and the Lightning are made for each other, that this is Steven’s team. They’re nearly the same age, after all, and it feels right that their destinies are aligned. When he puts on that jersey for the first time, he feels electric, the hair on his arms standing up like it does during a thunderstorm, though the sky outside the arena is clear with stars.

 

He meets Victor on a Thursday. At the time, Steven doesn’t realize why that’s significant, why that’s special. But. They meet on a warm and not-yet-rainy Thursday in Montreal, a gray sky and the sound of faraway thunder.

Steven is there to watch Johnny get drafted tomorrow, but he bumps into Victor Hedman in the hotel elevator. There’s a moment of shared interest, and then Steven politely wishes Hedman luck and gets off on his floor, and he watches the doors close behind him, Hedman standing at the back with the shadows on his face. He looks otherworldly, for a second, in the weak light of the elevator.

Johnny goes first, to the Islanders. And then the Lightning choose Victor Hedman, and in the stands, Steven feels again that sense of rightness.

Victor is eighteen, a year younger than Steven, but his pale eyes are clear and knowing. He’s tall, a big body, good for the blue line. He’s exactly what the team needs.

“Hey again,” Steven says, not at all shy at his second training camp, and Victor smiles. He has a nice smile.

His English is pretty good, for a European. Steven doesn’t know a lot about Sweden, but he’s a little surprised, and then he’s just grateful for the easy communication. Victor is a quiet soul, more of a listener than a talker, but he’s got a commanding presence in the room even as a rookie. Steven has no idea how he does it.

Maybe it’s his size. Maybe it’s the way he plays. But when Victor walks into the room, Steven’s eyes go to him, always, like they’re being dragged there by magnets.

 

It rains a lot in Tampa that year. Thunderstorms at least once every two weeks, and everyone grumbles about it, about how wet it is all the time, and how the river is going to flood, and how the rain is a fucking hassle. It even feels like the rain follows them on their roadies; half the time when they step off their charter, it’s storming in Calgary or St. Louis or Detroit. The rain makes everyone miserable, more miserable than their season record.

Steven fucking loves the storms. He won’t risk his body by standing out in the rain like he did as a kid, but he likes hanging out on the porch of Vinny’s house on warmer days, or opening all the windows in his own apartment, letting the whole place fill with the smell of rain.

When he buys his own house, Steven decides, he’s going to get one with a porch like Vinny, so he can sit outside and watch the rain.

He likes that the smell follows him into the locker room, that sometimes in the middle of the usual locker room stink of twenty sweaty bodies, there’s the sudden scent of ozone, bright and a little burning, clearing his head.

“You’re a little weird, you know that, Stammer?” Downie says, when Steven mentions it.

“I just like it when it rains,” Steven says, which he doesn’t think is that weird.

“Well you’re in luck this season. We might break a record for most afternoon thunderstorms in a year. They’re calling this the wettest year Tampa’s seen in decades.”

Across the room, Victor shifts in his stall, and his eyes flick quickly over to Steven before he looks away and continues rehydrating.

Steven walks with Marty out of the dressing room, and he hears Marty sigh when they get to the door and see what the weather’s like. It’s a resigned sort of sigh, not at all surprised by this point. “I hate being wet all the damn time,” Marty says, eyes on the rain falling in sheets outside the arena. And then he sighs again and tells Steven, “Don’t get a cold out there,” before he gathers himself and sprints across the lot to his car.

Steven doesn’t have an umbrella with him either, and he’s about to follow Marty outside when Victor catches his elbow. There’s a folded umbrella in his other hand.

“You want to share?” Victor asks, and Steven loves thunderstorms, but he doesn’t love sitting in his car with wet socks, so he agrees.

There are little yellow lightning bolts on Victor’s umbrella, which Steven finds hilarious, but he doesn’t say anything about them as Victor walks him to his car. He only turns and thanks Victor for the umbrella, and then he ducks inside and is about to close the door when Victor says, “I like the storms too,” and walks away. Steven watches him go.

 

At practice, Victor breaks his stick on a slapshot, and the sound of it echoing off the rafters is like a crack of thunder.

 

They settle into a routine more or less, steady and constant, even as the team around them changes, even as players come and go and coaching staff come and go and owners come and go. They’re good then bad then good again, lose the Conference Final in seven games and then miss the playoffs outright the next two years. Things change. At the heart of it all, there’s always Steven and Victor, and the lightning bolt.

 

(Losing Vinny hurts. Losing Marty hurts more.

Steven doesn’t talk about it, but Victor sits with him after his first game back, after the reporters are done asking Steven about the broken leg and how he feels playing his first game in four months. Victor doesn’t ask any of that. He only sits with Steven, and then he asks, “Are you okay, Stammer?”

And Steven could say that he’s not great, not after missing four months of hockey, after missing the Olympics, after missing Marty all the way in New York. Marty who _asked_ to leave, who wanted to leave Tampa in a way that Steven can’t imagine.

He only fixes his eyes on the anchor that Victor wears around his neck, and he says to it, “Yeah, I’m fine, Heddy. More than fine.”

The new C on his chest feels heavy, until Victor puts a hand on Steven’s arm, and then Steven is filled with a kind of strength he didn’t know he had, heart beating madly as energy floods him. He should be tired after the game, muscles protesting after playing a full hard twenty minutes for the first time in ages, but he isn’t tired at all. He looks up at Victor, at his eyes lost in shadow under his Lightning cap, and knows where that almost inhuman strength is coming from.

“Thanks,” he whispers, and Victor only dips his head a little, and when he removes his hand, that easy strength stays with Steven through the night, and the next day, and the whole rest of the season.)

 

It rains less as the years go on. They still get sudden thunderstorms, which are a staple of Tampa anyway, but as Steven gets stronger and grows into the team, finding where he fits with the Lightning, the weather goes more or less back to normal. Nothing’s as bad as it was in 2009-2010, Steven’s second season in Tampa, with its endless thunderstorms.

Victor is growing into his own too, alongside Steven. He’s maturing into one of the best defensemen in the league.

It feels special, growing up in this franchise with Victor by his side. It feels special to see Victor as one of his alternate captains, that steady presence that Steven can lean on, as strong and grounding as the oak tree growing in his yard.

 

Off the ice, their lives start to revolve around each other, which should feel weird but doesn’t. They’re hockey players. Their lives naturally revolve around hockey, around the Lightning and Amalie Arena, and it’s no surprise that they get caught up in each other.

During his fifth season with the Lightning, Steven had bought a house with a big porch and a young oak in the front yard. Victor comes over a lot, lives in Steven’s house almost as much as he lives in his own.

They watch _Game of Thrones_ together, and _Scandal_ , and Victor watches a truly ridiculous amount of soccer on Steven’s TV. He knows all the European leagues and talks about them nonstop, even though Steven has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. But he likes listening to Victor talk about it, even if he’s too impatient to learn the rules himself.

It’s always Thursday when Victor comes over to Steven’s house. He always brings a six pack of beer, and his Manchester United snapback, and his dog Harry, who gets along well with Steven’s dog Trigger. Steven isn’t sure how the Thursday tradition started, but whenever they’re home in Tampa, Victor is there.

Victor just really loves Thursdays for some reason. “They’re my day,” he tells Steven, and Steven nods, because he gets it. Some days of the week are just _your day_.

When they’re on the road, Victor stops by Steven’s room on Thursday nights, and they play cards or watch baseball. In the early years, Steven had to explain the rules of baseball to Victor, but now Victor knows enough to follow along. He likes the Rays. Steven, always loyal to Toronto in everything but hockey, is still a Jays fan.

“Every Canadian I know is a Jays fan,” Victor complains.

Steven only laughs. “Well, you know, we all love our local boys.”

“You need more baseball teams, so not everyone is a fan of Toronto,” Victor says. He has very strong opinions about Toronto, especially after Leafs games, but his eyes are on the TV now, riveted, and Steven slides down to lay next to him on the bed.

It is too small for two full-grown hockey players, especially when one of them is 6’6”, but having Victor in his bed is nice. Victor smells clean and a little sharp, like the rain that Steven loves so much, and he gives off so much heat that Steven doesn’t even need to turn up the heater. He has stolen all but one of Steven’s pillows.

They fall asleep in the bed together, TV muted after the eighth inning, cards scattered underneath them.

In the morning, Steven wakes first to Victor’s gentle snoring, and with his eyes he traces Victor’s long eyelashes, his beard, the anchor pendant he always wears around his neck, the king of hearts that’s being crushed underneath his shoulder. This is where he belongs, Steven thinks selfishly for a moment, and then he snaps out of it and stumbles out of bed and into the shower.

 

One Thursday, it storms heavily, the kind of storm that Tampa doesn’t see too often anymore. The rain comes down like a waterfall, the thunder furious-sounding as it crashes around the house, shaking the branches of the oak. Steven sits out on his porch and stews over the blowout last night, the complete lack of discipline by the team. The storm matches his mood exactly.

He doesn’t think Victor will come by in this kind of rain, but he’s also not surprised when he sees Victor’s car turn into his driveway.

There’s the six-pack in his hand. No dog though.

“Harry didn’t want to come today,” Victor explains, and Steven thinks about Trigger hiding under the bed and understands.

He takes the beer that Victor hands him. “Hell of a storm,” he says, and sure weather talk isn’t the best way to start a conversation, but this really is one hell of a storm.

“Hell of a game,” Victor replies.

Steven agrees and drinks his beer. Next to him, Victor settles more deeply into his own seat, sipping at his beer, and when he meets Steven’s eyes, some of that unhappy tension in Steven melts away. He sees the same thing happening with Victor, the tight anger that Victor has been carrying since last night easing out of him.

The rain slows, coming down more gently, and the lightning grows less frequent. The thunder is just a soft rumble now, distant, fading like the memory of last night’s game.

 

The final buzzer is lost in the thunderous sound of the crowd in the United Center, screaming, cheering, throwing things, probably crying. Steven sees none of this. He sees nothing but ice as he bends over, stick across his knees, head hanging as he tries to fight back the tears. It’s the worst moment of his life.

There’s the burning smell of ozone, like lightning just struck the ice, and then the toe of a skate drifts into view. He feels a gentle hand on his helmet for a second, before the hand moves to his shoulder.

“Next year,” Victor says quietly, so quiet that Steven almost doesn’t hear him.

It storms all the way back to Tampa.

The sky is pouring outside of Chicago, the earlier good weather gone, and Steven overhears the pilot say something about an unexpected thunderstorm. But they all get on the charter anyway, and then the plane is climbing above the heavy clouds, the cabin quiet for the first time all season. No one speaks in anything louder than a whisper.

Steven wishes he could’ve slept on the plane; god knows he’s tired enough, but he can’t sleep away the feeling of losing the Cup. He rolls up the window shades next to his seat and lays his head against the cold glass, watching the dark clouds pass below them, more or less invisible except when they’re lit up by frequent bursts of lightning.

Fucking ironic that this kind of lightning showed up tonight, he thinks. Each white-hot flash hurts his eyes.

It’s late when they touch down, close to two in the morning. Unloading the bus in the rain takes longer than anyone would like, and then they’re all hurrying back to their cars, everyone too stuck in their heads for more than a quick good night.

Steven stands outside his car, getting soaked, and he can’t bring himself to fit the key into the lock. He can’t bear for it to be over.

He doesn’t hear the footsteps splashing behind him, but he does notice when the rain cuts off suddenly, and when he looks up, he sees those little yellow lightning bolts on the umbrella above him. It’s getting pretty tattered now, the umbrella, but still usable.

“You want me to give you a ride?” Victor asks. “I can pick you up tomorrow too, drive you back here.”

“Yeah, that’d be—” Steven cuts himself off. “Thanks, Heddy.”

Victor drives him home in silence, the rain falling nonstop, the windshield wipers squeaking back and forth steadily. Steven can’t see the streaks of lightning anymore, but he can hear the quiet thunder through the haze of exhaustion and heartbreak.

He doesn’t get out of the car right away when they get to his house. He sits in the front seat, watching the rain, and then he turns to Victor and says, “Come inside with me.”

“You sure?” Victor asks quietly, and Steven nods, more sure of this than ever.

They don’t talk as Steven presses Victor against the wall in the entryway and kisses him, hands on Victor’s big shoulders, leaning up and in to reach his mouth. Steven’s read a number of airport romance novels in his life, and he’s never believed in the whole idea of electric kisses, but Victor’s mouth makes every molecule in his body feel alive, like it’s on fire. He feels like he’s spent twenty minutes on the bike, charged up and heart beating hard when he pulls back to catch his breath.

Victor is tense, his eyes too-bright in the dark—Steven hadn’t managed to turn the light on—and his hands on Steven’s waist are burning. Not literally. Maybe a little literally. Steven can’t think straight.

“Upstairs?” he whispers, and Victor kisses him again before letting Steven guide him to the stairs.

Steven doesn’t want to say that it’s like a religious experience, but it’s close.

Victor is big and overwhelming, and Steven doesn’t get overwhelmed easily, so that’s saying a lot. They keep the lights off, which is fine by Steven. His eyes are shut most of the time anyway, because it’s hard to look at Victor, hurts his eyes the way the lightning did earlier, and so Steven closes them. His tongue is buzzing, his lips, and everywhere else that Victor’s mouth has touched. He hooks a leg over Victor’s hip and digs his fingers into his back.

When Victor stops moving and tenses suddenly, Steven opens his eyes on a whim, and it’s just in time to see the whole room light up nearly as bright as day, white light from the window as lightning strikes so close it must’ve hit something in the yard or even the house itself. Victor says something that’s lost in the crash of thunder, so loud it literally shakes the foundations. But Steven can read his name clearly, the mouthed _Steven_ that’s really obvious with the way the room is still lit up.

He’s completely blind afterward from the flash, and he comes with his eyes open, seeing nothing, feeling Victor everywhere. He feels like a live wire, overcharged and shaking with it.

“Holy shit, what the fuck,” he gasps, thoughts of the Cup completely forgotten, and his vision clears to the sight of Victor grinning pretty smugly down at him.

Steven wants to say something else, like _did I die?_ but he passes out instead.

Victor is still there in the morning, like he didn’t just rock Steven’s world last night—literally—and Steven has to shake him a few times to wake him up. Guess he wasn’t imagining how good the sex was. Somehow, Steven thought he imagined the whole thing, including the thunder and lightning.

“That…took a lot out of me last night,” Victor mumbles when he finally does wake up, and then he stumbles into the bathroom, leaving Steven on the bed wondering if it would be rude to ask for a repeat.

The air outside is crisp and new, with that familiar, clean post-rain smell.

The rest of the week goes by quickly, everyone caught up in the immediate post-game interviews and end-of-season interviews and how-does-it-feel-to-lose-the-Cup interviews. Losing the Cup is definitely the worst experience of Steven’s life, and it weighs on him heavily, but he feels distanced from it for some reason, like the heartache isn’t so raw, like someone stuck a bandaid over that wound, for now.

He doesn’t break down when they ask about it, at least.

They clean out their lockers and pack their bags, and then everyone goes their separate ways for the summer. Victor gives Steven a long and lingering look before he leaves for his flight to Stockholm.

Toronto is beautiful and sunny, the sky clear, and there’s not a cloud in sight.

 

They almost go back the next year.

Almost.

 

The season is good, except for the cloud of free agency hanging over Steven. His contract is up this summer, and there’s a lot of money, really, like a fucking crazy lot of money, from places like Toronto and Buffalo and Detroit. Yzerman can’t offer Steven that kind of money, and he can’t offer Steven a place like Toronto, those boroughs that Steven grew up in, watching the rain from his bedroom window.

Steven tries not to think about leaving Tampa too much, but he can’t help it, not when that’s all anyone can talk about. _Stammergeddon_. Free agency on the horizon, the end of the world as they know it. Steven knows that his decision, whatever it is, might very well change everything.

He can tell that the free agency talk is putting the team on edge. Some of them were there when Marty left, know how much it stung when it happened. Most of those guys who _were_ there—Kuch, Tyler, Pally, Killer—they were young. They knew enough to know that it hurt, but not enough to know how _much_ it hurt.

But they play hockey. Because that’s what they do.

Sometimes, Steven catches Victor staring at him at practice, and the hair on the back of his neck stands up, and a feeling like a static charge flashes down his spine. He smells ozone in the locker room afterward, and it smells dangerous, makes the lizard part of his brain scream _danger_ and _lightning_ and _danger danger danger_.

By now, Steven knows where that smell is coming from.

Victor never says anything though, and Bish only gives Steven a curious look when he sees Steven discreetly trying to sniff the air around Victor’s stall. No one else seems to smell it.

So Steven lets it go and plays hockey, night after night after night on the ice, and he doesn’t think about free agency or about leaving Tampa, leaving the boys, leaving Heddy—

And then Steven gets the news about the blood clot they found near his collarbone, and he’s got nothing but time to think.

 

He watches a lot of Marvel during the playoffs. It’s not like Steven has much to do besides take his painkillers and work out and sit in the pressbox as the team takes the ice without him, goes to the Conference Finals without him. So. Steven watches a shit ton of Marvel movies in his free time, when he’s on the bike alone.

Kuch slinks in quietly and hops on the bike next to him when Steven is watching _Iron Man_. He likes the robotic suits, Steven thinks, and probably also Black Widow. Tyler likes _Captain America_ , and he’s a bit of a history buff, knows a lot about World War II, enough for some running commentary that he mostly directs at Pally. Killer walks in mid- _Hulk_ , and he stays until the end, along with Shu and Stralsy.

Victor always joins Steven for viewings of _Thor_. Victor has watched _Thor_ maybe a dozen times already, and Steven remembers being dragged to the movies with him when it first came out, but Victor enjoys reruns.

Maybe that’s why Steven never watches _Thor_ on the exercise bike. He only watches it at home, on Thursdays, with Victor over and his six pack of beer. Just the two of them.

“Why do you like _Thor_ so much?” Steven asks one time, during their fourth rewatch of the season. Seriously, four times is so many times to watch a movie in one year.

“He has a red cape,” Victor says, sounding really pleased with Hollywood’s costume choices.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” Victor says. “The cape is fun. I wouldn’t normally go with it, but it looks good with Chris Hemsworth’s hair.” He takes a drink. “And I like that it’s a movie about Thor.”

“The plot’s shit, Heddy.”

He shrugs. “It’s just Hollywood, Stammer. I like Chris Hemsworth. He makes a good Thor.”

Victor isn’t very blond, but he could probably play Thor, if he ever gives up hockey. Steven turns to him and squints, trying to picture Victor with a hammer in hand, lightning in his eyes, the defender of the world. It’s scarily easy to picture, actually. It’s only a step up from the very real picture of Victor with a stick in his hands patrolling the blue line, the Lightning’s best defenseman.

“But,” Victor adds, almost an afterthought, “Thor would never actually lose his hammer like that.”

“What, by being a hothead?” Steven grins at him, knowing about Victor’s more temperamental moments.

“By being stupid and getting banished from Asgard.”

“But you think Thor would lose his hammer in another way.”

Victor hesitates. “Well, maybe once. But that’s because it was stolen from him! Not because he was banished and stripped of Mjolnir.”

He’s being defensive. “You’re pretty defensive about this.”

“The stories of Thor and the Norse gods are from my culture,” Victor says simply. “I know Marvel isn’t very accurate, and I like the movie anyway. But I just want you to know that Thor isn’t really that stupid.”

“Sure thing, Heddy,” Steven says. “Thor’s not really an idiot. Got it.”

 

The Lightning make it to the Eastern Conference Finals. Game 7.

It’s the first game that Steven plays during the playoffs, and he is still on blood thinners, still not at 100%, but he needs to play this game. It’s do or die, for the first time this postseason.

He doesn’t do it though. He doesn’t score when his team needs it, when his team needs him, and they are one ugly bounce, one dirty goal from going back to the Final. Jo scores a beauty, but the Penguins take it 2-1, and that’s it, game over. End of the line.

Steven plays 11:55 and gets two shots on goal, and that is it for him in a Lightning sweater.

He thinks it will be raining when he steps out in Pittsburgh that night, but it’s not. The stars are invisible, and Steven can’t tell whether it’s clouds or light pollution, but there is no rain, like there was last year in Chicago. Steven wishes it was raining. He wishes it would fucking pour in Pittsburgh. He wishes there was lightning and thunder enough to drown out the thoughts in his head.

As he gets on the plane, the first drops begin to fall.

Back in Tampa, Victor drives him home again, like last year. When they get to his house, Steven doesn’t have to ask this time.

They haven’t done this since losing the Cup, and it didn’t affect their hockey or their friendship this season. This, Victor climbing into Steven’s bed, his playoff beard brushing against Steven’s when their lips meet, this is just something they understand.

They keep the lights off again. It’s a clear night in Tampa, no thunderstorm to blindside Steven, and he keeps his eyes open, or tries to anyway. It’s still electric.

Afterward, Victor kisses the scar on Steven’s shoulder, the red, half-healed line below his collarbone where the doctors cut into him to remove the blood clot. Steven sighs and digs his fingers into Victor’s back, and then he turns his face into Victor’s shoulder. He falls asleep like that, breathing in the smell of a summer storm.

 

“Will you leave?” Victor asks him, the morning of locker cleanout.

His eyes are deep, two completely unreadable wells of blue. Steven has gotten good at reading Victor over the years, but he can’t bear the thought of looking at him right now. Not when Victor is asking the same question that Steven’s been asking himself all season.

His eyes go from Victor’s anchor necklace to his bare chest, to Steven’s own hands, bunched in the covers. He feels trapped.

The birds have suddenly fallen quiet, and the air feels very still, thick and waiting, the way it gets before a big storm. Steven feels the familiar sensation of electricity down his back, lifting the hairs on his arms.

His lizard brain is silent. Probably terrified.

“I don’t know yet,” he says, into air so thick and tense that he feels like he can barely breathe it. His nose burns with the scent of ozone, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if lightning struck the bed right now. He wishes for rain.

Victor blinks and ducks his head, runs a hand through his hair, and rubs at his beard. He looks tired, Steven thinks, and a little sad. The tense feeling in the room is gone, the birds slowly starting to chirp again, and Steven didn’t even notice that the sun went behind a cloud until a warm ray falls across the bed.

“I’ll drive you to Amalie,” Steven says, even though he’s been doing that for the past few days already, since they got back from Pittsburgh, since Victor has been staying over every night.

When Steven drops him off at the airport a few hours later, Victor doesn’t ask him to stay, and Steven is grateful for that, at least.

He doesn’t linger in Tampa himself, after Victor is gone. He packs quickly, locks the door to his house behind him, and pats the trunk of the giant oak on his way to the car. When Steven had bought the house, that oak had been young still. Now, it is fully grown, its highest branches taller than his roof, green and healthy and spreading its leaves to catch the sun. Steven hadn’t realized how much time had passed.

 

He calls Victor after two weeks apart. Toronto is nice, Toronto is home, and Toronto is…full of Leafs fans who want Steven to sign with them.

It’s a relief to call Victor to talk. Their conversations usually start with contracts, but then veer off into other things, into what Victor is doing in Stockholm, into whether he’s seen his family in Örnsköldsvik (however you pronounce that), into random updates on Manchester United and the Premier League that Steven still doesn’t understand but that he appreciates anyway.

Victor is learning how to fly. He sends Steven a couple pictures of himself stuffed in the cockpit of a tiny plane, the kind with one propeller in front, which doesn’t exactly look airworthy to Steven. But Victor is grinning in the pictures, with his aviators and his pilot headset, thumbs up, and Steven is glad to see him so happy.

Victor really fucking loves that tiny plane.

“It’s not the plane,” he explains once, over FaceTime. “It’s the sky, Stammer. It’s flying.” He looks a little wistful when he adds, “I love flying.”

Steven knows that Victor’s had a total of maybe eight hours in the sky, but he’s not surprised that he fell in love with it so quickly.

“I’ll take you up in the sky one day, maybe when we’re retired. Can’t do it during the season.”

“Yeah,” Steven says, even though the thought of being in that tiny plane is fucking terrifying. The team charter is one thing; having one propeller keeping him between life and death is another. “I’d like that. After you get lots of practice in once we retire.”

“You’ll love it,” Victor promises. “Flying is—I miss it, when I’m on the ground. Miss it like hockey.”

Steven hears Victor’s voice, sees the look on his face when he talks about the sky, and knows that he’ll end up in that cockpit one way or another one of these days. “I believe you. Take me flying, Heddy.”

 

Steven has a pros and cons list for every team making calls to him. He has rosters spread out, projected cap hits, projected futures for each team that could be his future team. He talks to his parents and his agent and some of the Tampa boys, Bish and Boyler especially, but mostly he talks to Victor.

It makes sense why he’d turn to him. Victor is his closest friend, the last one left from the early days of Steven’s career. He has a year left on his contract, but Steven knows that Victor has his own lists, his own decision to make sooner or later. They’ve always been on the same page.

Sometimes, Steven gets too caught up in his head, finds himself picking up his phone and calling Victor at night for his opinion, forgetting the time difference with Sweden. Victor answers maybe half the time. He’s grumpy when Steven wakes him at 4 in the morning, and those conversations are short, mostly just Steven apologizing and the two of them making an appointment to call when both of them are really awake.

Victor always calls back, is the thing. He always calls back, less grumpy, that familiar voice on the other end of the line.

Maybe that’s why Steven decides the way he does, in the end.

 

July 1st is only days away when Steven finally makes up his mind.

It’s almost 4 in the morning in Sweden, and Steven knows he can’t wake Victor up _again_ , so he only sends a message, this time.

 _I’m staying_.

He’ll call Steve Yzerman in the morning. He’ll hammer out of the details, sign the paperwork, make it official. But for now…

He looks out the window, at the clear sky above his home, his second home in Toronto, and he wishes it were raining. It would feel like a sign.

In the morning, it is raining gently, and his phone is ringing. Victor is always better with the time difference than Steven is. He doesn’t get too excited and forget what time it is in Toronto, never forgets that Steven might be sleeping.

“I’m glad,” is the first thing that Victor says when Steven picks up, and Steven grins into his pillow, feels younger than his 26 years. Victor sounds so fucking happy.

Steven doesn’t want it to push, not after his own big news, but he doesn’t have to. Victor blows out a breath, says the words that Steven is waiting for. “Definitely makes my decision way easier.”

“You’ll stay?”

“Tampa,” Victor says, like a promise. “We’ll win together. In Tampa.”

He’s an entire ocean away, but Steven feels that heat and strength go through him, a feeling that he’s come to associate with Victor, like being pinned by lightning. From the phone, he can hear faint thunder all the way in Sweden, a heartbeat off from the rolling thunder outside Steven’s house. He hopes Victor is thinking about him.

He signs his new eight year contract that day, and Steven is quietly relieved that it’s lost among the Subban-Weber and Hall-Larsson blockbuster trades. The world didn’t end after all. Not for him, not for the Lightning.

Victor signs his extension 48 hours later, another eight year contract, just like Steven.

It’s a Thursday.

 

Eight more years of Tampa. Steven loves the city.

And eight more years of Victor Hedman and Steven Stamkos.

They both fly in early, before training camp starts. Victor moves back into his house, but he doesn’t spend much time there; he packs a bag and brings Harry over to Steven’s most days, and he spends the nights there too, in Steven’s bed. It’s like picking up where they left off.

They go down to the Riverwalk in the evenings, Trigger and Harry leading the way on their leashes, and Steven enjoys the wind on his face and the pre-storm smell in the air. There are clouds in the sky, but they’re distant, across the water. Steven has gotten good at reading clouds, and he doesn’t think these are going to touch land.

They spend the night in front of the water, watching the stormclouds, the flashes of lightning so far away that they don’t hear the answering thunder. Victor slips his hand into Steven’s.

 

There are promotional posters around the city, and Steven finds a series of movie-like posters for the team. Kuch is 007, _With Love From Russia_. Steven has a good laugh when he sees it, makes a note to tell Kuch when he arrives. And Victor’s is a headshot and the words _Thor: The God of Thunder_. Steven buys a copy of the poster and brings it home to show Victor. He bets Victor would love that.

“So I’m Thor?” Victor asks, more pleased than even Steven thought he’d be. He’s laughing.

“You’re Thor,” Steven says, nodding. “God of Thunder.”

“But before thunder, there’s always lightning,” Victor says, and his eyes are soft now when he looks at Steven, soft and serious. “The thunder always follows the lightning. And…You _are_ the Lightning, Stammer.” He pokes Steven in the chest, right where the C normally sits.

“So you’re thunder, I’m lightning.”

“And we’ll bring the storm.”

Steven has to laugh now. “That’s deep, Heddy. That’s real deep.”

Victor sits back, serious mood forgotten, as he studies the poster. “God of Thunder. Thor. Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

 

Steven accepted long ago that there’s something a little weird about Victor. Something about the way it storms whenever he’s in a bad mood, about the way the room feels charged with electricity when he walks in. Something about the way the scent of rain follows him everywhere, the smell of a summer storm. Even the way he’s a little obsessive about Thursdays, which is kind of cute.

Victor is a little weird, maybe in ways that aren’t completely human.

But that’s fine. Steven doesn’t need to ask.

He lays his head on Victor’s bare shoulder and blinks slowly at all that skin, listening to the light rain outside. The fancy anchor pendant that Victor always wears is resting in the hollow of his throat, catching the light.

It’s not an anchor, Steven realizes suddenly. It’s a little stylized hammer, but not the kind that Steven normally sees in a toolbox. It’s more like a warhammer, hanging from the chain by its short handle. There’s writing on it, like runes, but Steven can’t read it.

“You’re wearing a hammer,” he says sleepily. “I never noticed that.”

“You see things a lot more clearly now,” Victor says, his voice just a quiet rumble like distant thunder. His hand slides up Steven’s back, skin on skin and so warm.

“Oh. It’s cool.” Steven touches the necklace, tracing his finger over the pendant, around the head of the hammer. Outside, lightning flashes close by, so close that there’s no delay at all when thunder shakes the room. Steven stops touching the hammer. “It looks nice on you. Makes you look all…” He searches for the word. “…I don’t know, serious. Kind of stern. Intense.”

“Is that good?”

“Pretty good, yeah.”

It’s back to raining lightly, just normal rain. Steven spreads his fingers out against Victor’s chest, careful not to touch the hammer. Some things, he just doesn’t need to know.

 

He thinks instead about the upcoming season, what’s in store for them once training camp is over. Victor said that he would always follow Steven, and he did, but that’s just the beginning.

They still have things to do. Kuch needs a contract, and he is still in Russia, not yet back as the negotiations go on. He’ll come, Steven knows. And even without Kuch yet, they have Steven and Victor, and Steve Yzerman just locked up Killer and Vladdy and Vasy this offseason, and Tyler and Pally are on good contracts. Bish is still here. There are two small prospects, Brayden Point and Yanni Gourde, who might make the team out of training camp. They remind Steven of Tyler, all that potential.

Lightning and thunder and the storm that they’ll bring. They have a good team here in Tampa.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tyler is never allowed to watch _Thor_ with them again.
> 
> “Did you know that Thor is a fertility god?” Tyler asks during the movie, deceptively casual. Normally, Steven would be awfully suspicious about how Tyler Johnson is suddenly a scholar of Norse mythology, but he’s still processing the fertility god thing.
> 
> He’s just saying, it makes…sense.
> 
> “He has a huge dick,” Tyler sighs. “And a huge hammer. You think those things are related?”
> 
> “No,” Steven says, and resists telling Tyler about the tiny hammer pendant that Victor wears around his neck.
> 
> “Yes,” Victor says at the same time. He pauses and then says, suddenly, “Vasy’s wife is pregnant again. Sorry.”
> 
>  
> 
> 2017 NHL All-Star Game ["God of Thunder" poster](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3B_R5HWgAAS_j9.jpg) and ["From Russia With Love" poster](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Cs2CpXUAo8Yxp.jpg)
> 
> Stammer and Heddy after being defeated in the [2015 SCF](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHl0X-fUkAAj6d_.jpg)
> 
> Thor is the Norse god of thunder, lightning, rainstorms, oak trees, and strength, among other things. Thursday is named after him. He defends the earth with his hammer Mjölnir, and he is also a fertility god. Also yes he did have Mjölnir stolen from him once.


End file.
